My great-grandfather, a Comanche Indian, use to tell us, the grandchildren, stories in front of the fireplace as we gathered at the end of the day when we visited his farm in Oklahoma in the 1960's. Most of his stories were fascinating, however, some were very sad.
More than just the African Americans have suffered segregation and discrimination. Our story goes mostly untold. Once, this was our land.
Native Americans have long suffered the effects of segregation and discrimination imposed by the U.S. government and the larger white society. Ironically, Native Americans were not granted the full rights and protections of U.S. citizenship until long after African Americans and women were, with many having to wait until the Nationality Act of 1940 to become citizens.
This was long after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, which granted citizenship to African Americans but not, the Supreme Court decided in Elk v. Wilkins (1884), to Native Americans.
White women had been citizens of the United States since its very beginning even though they were not granted the full rights of citizenship. Furthermore, Native Americans are the only group of Americans who were forcibly removed from the lands on which they and their ancestors had lived so that others could claim this land and its resources.
Following the American Revolution, the U.S. government assumed responsibility for conducting negotiations with Indian tribes, all of which were designated as sovereign nations, and regulating commerce with them. Because Indians were officially regarded as citizens of other nations, they were denied U.S. Citizenship, even though this was our land long before any white man stepped foot on this land.
As white settlement spread westward over the course of the nineteenth century, Indian tribes were forced to move from their homelands. Although the federal government signed numerous treaties guaranteeing Indians the right to live in the places where they had traditionally farmed, hunted, or fished, land-hungry white settlers routinely violated these agreements and the federal government did little to enforce them.
In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which forced Native Americans to move west of the Mississippi River.
By the time of the Civil War, most Indian tribes had been relocated west of the Mississippi. However, once large numbers of white Americans and European immigrants had also moved west after the Civil War, Native Americans once again found themselves displaced. They were confined to reservations, which are federal lands set aside for their use where non-Indians could not settle. Reservation land was usually poor, however, and attempts to farm or raise livestock, not traditional occupations for most western tribes anyway, often ended in failure. Unable to feed themselves, the tribes became dependent on the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) in Washington, DC, for support.
In 1924, the Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans born after its passage. Native Americans born before the act took effect, who had not already become citizens as a result of the Dawes Severalty Act or service in the army in World War I, had to wait until the Nationality Act of 1940 to become citizens.
When people stand and shout about their rights, about segregation and discrimination, about rewriting history by tearing down statues and removing things like flags or names on buildings, know it doesn't change what happened. Good or bad, it is our, America's history. But can we as a nation, as people of all races, grow together and never make the same mistakes again moving forward, not looking back.
